On Thursday, the Georgetown Resident Assistant Coalition (GRAC)—the resident assistant (RA) union—discussed four key components of their contract with the university. The March 13 meeting, as the 10th bargaining session, marked a new milestone in GRAC’s nearly year-long effort toward a contract agreement.
The negotiations on Thursday focused on articles regarding a new compensation package for RAs, RA job descriptions, no strike/lockout provisions, and management rights.
During each bargaining session, the two parties agree to “turn around,” or resolve, an article once they reach an agreement on its content. During the March 13 session, GRAC and the university turned around one article regarding RA job descriptions. The union and the university have now reached agreements on 19 out of 22 articles.
Georgetown’s RAs voted to unionize on April 16, 2024, with 96% of voters in support. GRAC began negotiations with the university on August 29, 2024, after proposing a 23-article contract, which was later reduced to 22.
Those at the bargaining table on Thursday included Jonathan Fritts (LAW ’98), the university’s legal counsel and a partner at Morgan Lewis, a firm known for representing corporations in anti-union lawsuits; David Hammer-Hodges, a representative from the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 153 branch, which represents GRAC; and GRAC leadership.
During the session, GRAC and the university reached a tentative agreement on an article about what RA job descriptions would entail. Ulises Olea Tapia (SFS ’25), GRAC’s interim bargaining lead, who was at the table during the March 13 session, said that over the past several years, many RAs have found themselves performing tasks that aren’t in their job descriptions.
“What we wanted to do is sort of explicate what is expected of RAs, but also what isn’t expected of RAs. We have seen many reports of RAs performing some duties that are beyond our position. So some of these are duty scheduling, spearheading community wide events, and all those responsibilities are generally supposed to be responsibilities of the community director,” Olea Tapia said.
“For example, I can speak for myself, one of my supervisors last year, after she left Georgetown, she asked me to clean her office. And of course, this is not an expectation of our job,” Olea Tapia added.
The tentative job description article clearly outlines RA responsibilities, which will fall under four main categories: “Administrative Responsibilities,” “Community Building & Leadership, On-call Duty & Crisis Response, and Professional Development.” RA duties will be limited to what falls under each of those four categories as listed, and they are not responsible for anything else that is requested outside of them.
The most significant article discussed at the March 13 meeting was regarding compensation. The article spans several different aspects of compensation, including RAs’ room and board benefits, potential monetary compensation, and meal plans.
Currently, RAs are compensated by receiving free room and board, which includes a meal plan. However, if an RA receives financial aid that covers all or part of their room and board, they don’t receive additional aid allocated elsewhere, such as tuition, nor do they receive additional compensation from Residential Living.
Sam Lovell (CAS ’25), interim chairperson of GRAC who was involved in the March 13 negotiations, said that RAs on financial aid effectively get compensated less than other RAs under the current compensation model, since their aid would have covered part or all of their room and board expenses even if they weren’t RAs.
“If you’re on financial aid, like myself, there is a reduction in your actual benefit from the job. It’s a complicity in promoting some kind of inequality. So just from a standpoint of wanting to be equitable and treat students equitably, I think it’s a problem,” Lovell said.
Olea Tapia argued that room and board are necessary for an RA to do their job, as living on the floor they’re assigned to is part of their job description. There needs to be compensation outside of room and board, Olea Tapia said, because giving RAs the tools to do their job isn’t really payment.
“It is sort of similar to, say, a construction worker, that their employer tells the construction worker that their helmets and their safety equipment would be deducted from their compensation package,” Olea Tapia said. “This doesn’t make sense. These are conditions of employment, these are necessary for us to perform our duties as employees.”
Other Residential Living employees are paid wages on top of their room and board, such as student staff members in the summer who earn $17.50/hour as well as summer housing free of charge, according to their job description. Since that precedent has already been set for other employees of Residential Living, Olea Tapia said that the same benefits should be applied to RAs.
“They [student staff in the summer] also get free housing as part of the compensation plan—but it’s not just free housing. They get free housing, and on top of that, they get D.C. minimum wage. We think it should be the same for RAs that perform these duties year-round,” Olea Tapia added.
At the bargaining meeting, RAs and the university discussed a potential stipend that RAs would receive in addition to their free room and board. According to Lovell and Olea Tapia, GRAC originally proposed a $5,950 stipend per semester for RAs, which was based on a calculation of 20 hours of work per week for 17 weeks, paid at D.C.’s minimum wage of $17.50 an hour. The university countered with an offer of a $1,066 stipend, which would come out to $3.14 an hour if RAs were working for the same amount of time.
Olea Tapia said that GRAC was disappointed by this number.
“I think that $3 an hour for our work does not reflect the importance that the university places on the RA position, and I think that our compensation should reflect the work that we put in,” Olea Tapia said.
Based on documents GRAC shared with the Voice, the union’s counter-proposal is a $2,000 stipend per semester starting next fall, which would still only raise pay to $5.88 per hour. The agreement would include a pay adjustment every year, with the stipend reaching $3,000 by the 2028-2029 school year. If GRAC’s counter-offer is agreed upon, Spring 2025 RAs would also receive a retroactive stipend of $1,066 for the semester.
Despite disagreements regarding compensation, Olea Tapia stressed that GRAC is still very pleased with how the university and the union have interacted throughout negotiations.
“We’re also very thankful of how negotiations have gone so far,” he said. “We believe that both sides of the negotiating table are coming from a true place of love and care for the university and its students.”
In a statement to the Voice, a university spokesperson wrote that the university looks forward to continuing negotiations.
“The University values the contributions of Resident Assistants and continues to work in good faith with OPEIU to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement,” the spokesperson wrote. “Georgetown is committed to continuing to negotiate in good faith.”
RAs also discussed a no strike/no lockout clause, a common feature of union agreements which states that union members cannot go on strike or disrupt work, and in exchange the employer cannot limit their access to the workplace.
“Given that our place of work is our rooms, this article foresees our RAs will not strike, and in exchange, the university will not lock them out,” Olea Tapia said. “In this article, what GRAC has been really trying to do is to ensure that the bifurcation between our employment and our capacity of students is very clear.”
Olea Tapia also said that the proposal would also make clear that the university would not retaliate against RAs for participating in demonstrations on campus for other organizations that are separate from their duties as RAs.
“Nothing in this Section shall be construed to limit the participation of individual Resident Assistants in any lawful demonstrations or protest activity that is unrelated either to their assigned duties as Resident Assistants or to the provisions or administration of this Agreement,” the article, which Lowell shared with the Voice, reads.
Olea Tapia said that this clause ensures that RAs are seen as students and not employees in any non-union related demonstrations.
“We wanted to be very clear in making this bifurcation that we should not strike but also RAs as students should maintain their rights to engage in any protest and demonstration that they feel strongly about,” Olea Tapia said.
The last article discussed in the bargaining session was a clause on management rights, which is a standard article in union contracts that allows employers to hire and lay off employees at their own discretion, as well as any other decisions about management of the business. Given that RAs are also students at the school that employs them, this article also defined RA boundaries between student life and employee life. For instance, Olea Tapia explained that within their management rights article, it states that a students’ academic performance should not be considered when choosing RAs.
GRAC is awaiting their next bargaining session, and hopes to come to agreements with the university on the compensation, no strike/lock out, and management rights articles.
“We put the ball in the university’s court, now the university has all the language—it’s on them to make any response,” Olea Tapia said. “This is something that has been in the works for a year now, and it has been a very rewarding process. We’re pretty close to a full contract agreement. There’s only three articles remaining.”
In the meantime, GRAC leadership is preparing for a contract ratification vote by informing RAs about the tentative contract. Once GRAC and the university reach tentative agreements on the three remaining articles, GRAC leadership will present their general membership with the proposed contract, which members will vote on., If a majority agree to the terms, the contract will be ratified.
In the coming weeks, GRAC hopes to prepare their membership for this vote and inform them about what the union’s advocacy means for their new contract terms.
“We’re hoping that negotiations moving forward are more efficient and more expedited, given that we’re on the last stretch,” Olea Tapia. “The university has stated this time and time again that RAs perform an essential role in the community and that we are appreciated, we hope to see that reflected in our compensation package.”
